The present invention relates to the field of process simulation in the chemical process industry (CPI) and, more particularly, to utilizing spreadsheet user interfaces to flowsheets of a CPI simulation system.
The chemical process industry (CPI) has long used machines to aid in mathematically modeling a process and its unit operations from first principles. Today, numerous process simulation systems (e.g., Honeywell UNISIM, HYSYS, Aspen OTS, Shadow Plant, Fantoft, etc.) exist that are able to perform steady-state and dynamic simulations. These simulations often lead to optimizations and improvement throughout a plant lifecycle, which includes a conceptual design stage, a plant design stage, control implementation stage, procedure development stage, operator training stage, and a production stage.
An ideal user base for process simulation systems includes control engineering personnel. Unfortunately, conventional process simulation systems have been relatively difficult to use, especially dynamic systems, which have resulted in a need for simulation specialist to operate the simulation systems. It would be advantageous, yet presently not possible, to enable control engineers to access the functionality of a process simulation system utilizing tools and/or interfaces with which they are inherently familiar, such as utilizing user interfaces of conventional spreadsheet applications.